Introduction

Dave Sucharski didn’t think much about whether he had access to time off work for caregiving until he needed it. It was only when his wife was pregnant and about to deliver their first child in the summer of 2017 that Sucharski, who participated in our focus groups and agreed to be interviewed, realized the small Pennsylvania firm where he worked didn’t offer paid or unpaid paternity leave. Because of their small size, they also weren’t required by law to offer 12 weeks of unpaid Family and Medical Leave, or FMLA.

His wife had a difficult delivery, and their daughter wound up in the neonatal intensive care unit for several days. And although Sucharski was the one who wanted to start a family, and he was the one who dreamed of being an active caregiver and equal partner, he found himself back at work a week and a half later, having used up all his allotted paid vacation time. His wife, who also had a difficult recovery, was entitled to six weeks of partially paid disability and 12 weeks of unpaid leave through FMLA. She cashed out all her paid sick and vacation time to get a few weeks’ more pay, then took the remaining time unpaid. “It was pretty abysmal. She piecemealed what she could,” he said. “I carried—and still do carry—some guilt and resentment that I couldn’t be there to give her support and help.”

Sucharski said he wished things were different. He wished he’d had more time to provide care to his wife and daughter. He wished his traditional family had been more supportive. “I had no one in my inner circle of family or friends who could say, ‘Oh Dave, it’s so important for you to be there.’” He wished American business culture didn’t expect men to prioritize work over care. “I don’t feel (taking leave) is widely accepted in the business world. I felt pressure that my job is to be the breadwinner, not to be home with the ice packs and baby bottles.”

And he wished he’d thought about it all sooner. “I became more aware of the importance of the man’s role as supporter and caregiver in the first days and first weeks after my daughter was born,” he said. “That’s when the lightbulb started to hit—you’re not going to be able to be everything you should be.”

The United States is woefully behind its peers when it comes to allowing workers paid time off to care for themselves, new infants or adopted children, sick or disabled family members, aging parents, and other loved ones in need of care. Neither the patchwork of public policies nor the private sector voluntary practices meet twenty-first century working families’ needs.

Since 1993, many U.S. workers have had access to unpaid, job-protected workplace leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). About 20 million American workers use FMLA to take unpaid time off from work every year.¹ Contrary to popular belief that FMLA is used primarily by new mothers, more than half of those using the unpaid leave need it to address their own serious health condition. Fewer than one quarter of leave takers use it to care for a newborn child, and 18 percent use FMLA to care for a family member.

And it’s not just women who use FMLA. About 56 percent of those using FMLA are women. Forty-four percent are men.² In using FMLA, many of these workers sacrifice all or most of their usual pay, unless they live in one of the few states that offers paid family leave or temporary disability, or they happen to work for an employer who voluntarily offers a paid leave benefit. Even these benefits may not fully reimburse workers for their full wage or salary. One-quarter of the companies required by law to provide FMLA fail to comply because they fail to offer the full 12 weeks of leave to men.³ And only workers who have been employed full time for over one year at companies with more than 50 employees are eligible.

In contrast, nearly every country besides the United States guarantees workers some publicly funded maternity leave, for an average of 18 weeks among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).⁴ The majority of OECD countries provide more than 50 percent of wage replacement to new mothers while on leave from their jobs, with many guaranteeing full wage replacement. Most non-OECD countries also outpace the United States when it comes to paid maternity leave offerings, including some of the poorest countries in the world. Haiti, for instance, offers about one month of paid maternity leave before the delivery and two months of leave after the birth of a child.

Nearly every country besides the United States guarantees workers some publicly funded maternity leave, for an average of 18 weeks among countries in the OECD.

Over the past 20 years, as gender norms have evolved, the international paid leave movement has turned its attention to leaves for men, especially new fathers.⁵ In 1994, the International Labor Organization reported that 40 countries provided some form of paid paternity leave by law. By 2013, the number had risen to 78, with more countries also offering paid parental leaves designed to promote gender and caregiving equity that can be shared between mothers and fathers.

Today, most high-income countries offer some kind of at least partially paid leave to fathers as well as mothers, typically paid through a public social insurance program. This often includes options for leave immediately following the birth or adoption of a child and a second leave option for the father to care for an infant after the mother has returned to work or at some other point in the child’s early years. Two-thirds of the 36 OECD countries have statutes offering some paid paternity leave of varying lengths. In three countries, Belgium, Italy, and Portugal, it is obligatory for fathers to take some or all of their paid paternity leave, which ranges from five days to two weeks. According to the World Policy Analysis Center, 14 middle-income countries and 28 high-income countries now offer 14 weeks or more of paid paternity leave.⁶ However, unless countries have implemented policy designed to encourage men to use the leave offered to them by law, uptake of leave remains imbalanced by gender.

In a few places, longer, fully funded parental leaves designed to encourage both mothers and fathers to actually use the policy has become the norm. In Sweden in 2017, for instance, men took 34 percent of the leaves. That proportion has been climbing since Sweden, along with other countries, began to offer families exclusive “daddy days.”⁷ These policies, first adopted by Iceland, are designed to specifically encourage men to take leave by creating an option for dedicated leave for fathers or non-birth parents that is non-transferrable to the mother, which they must “use or lose.”⁸ These policies to nudge men’s behavior were adopted after other measures, including more pay during the leave, job protection, and longer leaves, were not enough to empower men to actually use the policies on the books. Even relatively low-income countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo now offer paid paternity leave (three weeks).

While parental leave policies are more common, a few countries have also introduced other, gender-neutral leave programs meant to accommodate workers who must leave work temporarily to provide care to someone other than an infant, including disabled or ill adult family members. According to the World Policy Analysis Center, less than a quarter of OECD countries provide three months of paid leave to care for adult family members.⁹

The United States has not been untouched by this wave of policy developments. Beginning with California in 2002, eight states and the District of Columbia have enacted and implemented, or are in the process of implementing, paid family and medical leave programs through state-level legislation.¹⁰ All of these state policies make paid leave available to workers in the private sector (and some public sector workers) who need time away from their jobs to provide care to newborns, newly adopted and newly-placed foster children, disabled or ailing loved ones, and their own serious health issues. Some states built their paid family leave programs on top of pre-existing Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) programs, which have enabled mothers to receive partial pay for six to eight weeks after the birth of a child since the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. TDI programs also enable employees to take time away from work due to a serious health issue. All of the state paid family and medical leave and temporary disability insurance programs are funded through payroll deductions from employers, employees, or both.¹¹

In the absence of a federal policy for paid leave, and in response to employee demand, a number of private employers in the United States have begun bolstering paid leave offerings for their employees. However, the benefit is typically offered by large employers—many of them multinationals already offering paid family leave benefits to employees overseas—and typically offered to high-wage professional workers much more frequently and with more generosity than to lower-wage and hourly workers.¹² For example, over the past three years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows a 5 percent increase in access to paid family leave among private-sector workers in the United States, from 13 percent in 2016¹³ to 18 percent in 2019.¹⁴ However, that overall increase masks deep disparities. In that period, leave among the highest wage workers grew from 24 percent to 35 percent (an 11 percent increase), while leave for the lowest wage workers grew from 4 percent to 5 percent, a mere 1 percent increase.

When private companies do choose to offer paid leave as a benefit, it is often described as a “perk,” or fringe benefit to attract top talent. A select few companies have policies that compare favorably with international peers when it comes to duration and rate of wage replacement. Of the private employers who offer leave, a majority offer six to 12 weeks of leave, with some pay. Some companies have made longer leaves available to “primary” caregivers (usually women) and offered shorter leaves to “secondary” caregivers (usually men).¹⁵ But these plans have come under fire as unfair, and a number of men who need time off work to care for family are challenging them in court as discriminatory on the basis of sex.¹⁶

Even when employees have access to paid leave at work, research shows the presence of these policies does not always mean employees feel comfortable using them, or prevent them from worrying, sometimes rightly, about negative repercussions if they do use them.

Men are close to half of the growing number of Americans acting as caregivers to aging adults in their families.

The movement for more and better paid leave policies comes as men take on historically unprecedented roles as caregivers throughout the United States. Prior studies have found that though men spend significantly less time than women participating in unpaid work like caregiving in the home on average,¹⁷ men are taking on more active roles as fathers than men of previous generations. Men are also close to half of the growing number of Americans acting as caregivers to aging adults in their own families. With the United States’ rapidly aging population, it is anticipated that men will only continue to take on a larger role in caregiving, and to confront challenges in balancing paid work with family caregiving responsibilities.

In our discussion group with fathers in particular, there was more yearning for caregiving leave and longer leaves than, in many cases, the actual experience of it. “It is unfortunate we do not have this universal leave benefit. There are people who are going back to work within a few weeks of giving birth and this does not seem right to me. I would be excited if this were an option and I wish it was when I had our first child,” said Asher J.

Throughout 2019, the Better Life Lab at New America conducted a multi-modal study of men and caregiving in the United States, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company created by Melinda Gates. This research included a quantitative component: a nationally representative survey of 2,966 Americans, in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, including oversamples of adult men and fathers of children zero to eight years old.

The research also included a qualitative research component: five three-day, online threaded discussions about men and caregiving, each with a different group of participants: adult women from the general population, adult men from the general population, fathers of children ages zero to eight, men who provide unpaid care for an adult, and men who work as professional caregivers, either in the medical field or in early childhood education. Both components included modules specifically on paid leave. For more detail, please see the Methods section. This is the first in a series of reports on men and care. We detail the findings of our men and caregiving leave modules below.